Lina waited impatiently for the bus on the corner of Third and Gerard.  It was due ten minutes ago but it was possible that she had just missed it.  Buses back in her old city were never early, but the Sunnydale buses couldn’t have had many passengers to pick up.
     Just then, the number 12 came pummeling down the hill towards her stop.  It swerved this way and that, and she dove back for fear it would drive up on to the curb and hit her.  It didn’t, slowing to a gentle stop, the brakes hissed and the doors swung open in front of her.
     Lina adjusted her shoulder bag and stepped up on the first step.  “What was that about?” she demanded, feeling more like herself already.  “Did the brakes fail?  What in god’s name happened on that hill?”
     The driver just stared straight ahead, cap pulled over his eyes.  Lina stepped up another step, to hear the door close behind her.  Unsure of what to do, she deposited her fare and went to sit in the back of the bus.
     There were about fourteen passengers, all dressed in dark clothes, except for a child that was playing with a half-deflated balloon.  They all looked sleepy too, tired after a long day of work.  Lina checked her watch.  6:23 and already it was pretty dark.  She wondered what Buffy and Willow and Xander were doing right now.  Probably at the mall, or another club or something.  It occurred to Lina that she wasn’t sure there was a mall in Sunnydale.  All of a sudden she felt a pang of homesickness.  To be back in her old city, with her old friends.  Even Naga’s laugh wouldn’t be that annoying.  Wait a second, Lina stopped herself abruptly.  Who was Naga?  And what was it about her laugh that just the idea of it made her dizzy?
     She dismissed the idea of Naga and her hideous laugh and checked out the window to find the next stop was hers.  She reached her hand up to ring the bell and found the cord disconnected.  All of a sudden she had a really dreadful feeling in the pit of her stomach.  She heard a pop, and an explosion of color as the child with the balloon popped it a few feet from her nose.  She stood up, almost falling over and ran to the doors.
     “Driver, I need to get off!”  The bus kept speeding down the road as though she had never said anything.  “Driver, this is my stop.  I want off NOW!” she tried to hide the panic from her voice but it was to no avail.  Frantically, she tried to hammer her elbow through the glass in the door.  It didn’t even chip the glass and her elbow ached terribly.  She glanced up at the manual opener, above the door itself, but the glass wouldn’t break there either.  She dove into her bag, rummaging desperately, when she was suddenly turned around and pushed up against the door.  A vicious looking vampire looked down at her, and began to open its mouth and descend towards her neck.  Lina located what she’d been searching for, popped the cork and tipped the bottle of Holy Water down its throat.  It gasped and screeched, before evaporating right in front of her.
     Lina dropped her bag to her feet, a crucifix in one hand, a stake in the other.  After last night she figured she ought to come prepared.  The next vampire hurled itself at her mindlessly and plunged right into the stake.  It evaporated too, freeing her stake for the one that came at her next, pushing her to the back of the bus.  She kicked it back, but she wasn’t strong enough to have an affect on the creature.  It came lunging at her again, this time knocking the stake from her hand.  Lina gasped, clutching to the crucifix as hard as she could, and thrusted it out towards the vampire.  She took it by surprise, as it stepped back as though she had waved flaming torch at it.  It winced and then dove at her again, despite the pain.
     Lina heard a crash above and then behind her, outside the bus.  A body dropped through the emergency air vent just in front of her, and behind the vampire.  He drove a stake through the bloodsucker, catching it completely off guard.  Zel ran towards where Lina was lying, sprawled across the back seats in the bus, crucifix at the ready.
     “Put that down.”  He ordered, and she did, carefully, and then bent to pick up the stake she had dropped.
     “No.”  Zel looked around, as more of the ‘people’ got out of their seats in Zombie manner and started towards Lina.  “There are too many here to get them all and we’re too close to a nest where there are more.” He hoisted himself through the vent up on top of the bus, and then reached down for her hand.  He tugged her up, kicking back at the zombies as they reached lazily up towards the opening in the ceiling on the bus.  He stood up, trying to maintain balance as the bus picked up speed and began to swerve again.  He picked Lina up then, and hurdled off the back of the bus, landing first on his feet, and then clumsily underestimating the extra weight, was driven forward onto his knees.
     Lina stood up, brushed herself off and helped Zel up.  “Look, thank you, but no thank you.  I didn’t need your help.”
     Zel said nothing as he adjusted his cape, pretending not to hear her.
     “I hate it when guys victimize girls like that.  Just because I’m smaller than you are doesn’t mean I don’t know how to take care of myself.  I had everything under control.”
     “Famous last words.”  Zel muttered.  “In case you hadn’t noticed, you killed three out of fifteen.  And that last one would have finished you off.”
     “Don’t treat me like I don’t know what I’m doing!”  Lina felt good, letting off some steam for once rather than pretending everything was just peachy-keen.  “I knew what to bring and how to handle it.  I hate it when people patronize me too.  I’m not some brainless little girl that can’t go down the street by herself without getting into trouble and needing some over blown hero to come to the rescue.  I’m not helpless, so stop acting like I need a big strong guy to depend on.”
     “No one said you were helpless or brainless or anything like that.”  Zelgadis looked down at her like she was helpless, brainless and everything like that.  “But you’re not a Slayer.  You don’t have the gift of strength and stamina the way the Slayer does.  You may be able to polish off a few vampires with a stake and some Holy Water, but you can’t rely your strength the way a Slayer can.  I thought you would have figured out after last night that girls shouldn’t wander Sunnydale after sun down.”
     “You know about the Slayer?”  Lina dismissed the last remark, intrigued that he might know about Buffy.  For once she’d have the upper hand.
     “Every vampire knows about the Slayer.  She has killed many of my acquaintances, as have her predecessors.”
     “Oh.”  Lina wasn’t sure how good an idea it would be to carry on this conversation.
     “It doesn’t matter to me anymore.  It used to matter that I knew that somewhere people were dying.  Then I became a vampire and everything changed.  I didn’t even care if vampires, people I had known for so long, died right in front of me.  It didn’t matter if they killed each other or if I killed them myself.  Death is part of life, and everyday I am reminded that I don’t have the luxury of peace that comes with death.”
 The morbidity of that confession made Lina’s blood run cold.  “Have you ever thought about taking your life?”
     “Many times.  Perhaps I don’t have the guts to do it.  Or perhaps I keep thinking that there is a chance for me still, even after centuries of years of solitude.”
     “What kind of chance?”
     “The chance to be mortal again.  The chance to…”
     “What?”  Lina found herself clinging to his every word.
     “Nothing.  It doesn’t matter anymore.  It was an impossibility even while I was human.”  He started walking towards her old stop.
     “No, there is something.  I can tell!” Lina had to jog to keep up with Zelgadis.
     Zel stopped right in front of Lina, and she almost collided with him again.  “You try to pretend to understand things that you will never be able to.  You live the life of a mortal child, and I live that of an undead demon.  You can’t pretend to know what it is to possess that kind of life, to live in misery and isolation.”
     Lina looked down at the oddly shaped pebbles that lined the dirty asphalt.  It was the truth, she realized, that she appeared to him to be some scrawny, spoiled little girl, staring at him as a toddler stares at a crippled man; with curiosity and a horrid fascination.  But without compassion.  “I didn’t mean…”
     “It’s obvious that you didn’t.” Zel replied coldly.  “You wouldn’t think ahead, think about anyone other than yourself.  You’re so driven to find out what makes a demon tick?” The cruel sarcasm in his voice was evident, so much so he almost regretted his tone.
     “I’m sorry.” Lina said quietly.  “I am, because that’s not what I think of you.  You think you’re a monster, but you’re not.  You don’t have the soul of a monster. I…I…”
     That struck Zel.  What had he expected her to say?  Had he expected this child to run away and cry?  Was he pushing her away from him?
     Lina composed herself quietly, waiting for a response.  Finally, she said, “You are what you believe.  But I can tell that you’re afraid.”
     “Afraid of what?” Zel turned to her, grasping her shoulders tightly.  He would show Lina that he wasn’t afraid, not of a little girl.
     Lina managed a humorless smile. “You’re afraid of friendship and you’re afraid of loving people.  You’re afraid of betrayal, and you’re afraid of somebody you love not loving you back.”
     “I’m not in love with you.” Zel released her coolly, turning away from her again.
     Lina felt as though he had knocked the air of out her.  What was she doing, trying to pretend she was in love with Zelgadis?  But her words escaped her mouth, if only whispered.  “I’m afraid of that too.”
     Zelgadis turned to her, and reached for her hand.  It was dwarfed by his rough, sturdy, well-used one.  “You can’t live in this world, where you sit back and let emotions drift you through life.  It’s hell, because I’ve done it and I know.”
     Lina was crying now, quietly, and the tears streaked her dirt-smeared cheeks.  Maybe because she was in love with someone who didn’t love her back, or because this was something that she had known would happen.  She didn’t know how, but she felt like she knew it would, that it was an inevitable fate that had been waiting for her so long.  “I…” She gasped through her tears and struggled to keep her voice steady.  “I mean you can’t go through life without emotions either.  That’s worse than hell, because you can’t even love.”
     “Lina…” The way Zel had said her name, it stung something inside of him.  Like a pang of memory, a smell of a familiar flower, the taste of a potent wine that haunts with its familiarity.  This made Zel shiver, and feel useless and helpless.
     He bent towards her, this hands caressing her stained cheek.  He pressed his lips against hers and a flood of relief wash over him.  This was right.  Lina closed her eyes and felt the gentle prickles of tiny raindrops dance coolly on her eyelids.  She heard the roar of thunder roll over the sky above them, and sighed, parting her lips from his.  She inclined her head towards the storm, leaned her head back let the fresh, icy rain water lick her neck, and seep through her wavy red hair.
     She dove back into his arms fully again, embracing Zel.  She wanted to cry again, because this was all she wanted, all she could ask for.  She felt surrounded by ecstasy, by white passion.  Lina pressed her lips against him and let herself collapse into him, with complete trust and warmth.  She let the rain come.
 

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